The Dilemma of the Disney Fan Site

Bob gets serious, mostly, and talks some shop

- by Bob McLain, January 13, 2011

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As a Disney fan, it never mattered to me who went to Disney sites, or why. As a Disney fan site owner, however, it's become an important concern, especially since I set a target of February 1st for the Disney Dispatch to reach one million page views. I'm probably going to miss that by a few ... hundred thousand. (I can only hit Refresh so fast, y'know!)

I like to simplify things and I think I've simplified the types of Disney fan sites into a grand total of two. The audiences served by these sites are quite different, and the one type of site grows much faster and can become vastly larger than the other. That's bad news for me - and for most Disney fan site owners like me - since we run the 'other' kind of site.

Let's get down to it: I label Disney fan sites as either event-driven or interest-driven.

Event-Driven Disney Fan Sites

If your thoughts turn to Disney only when you're planning a vacation, your visits to Disney sites are event-driven. The event, of course, is your vacation. When the event ends, so does your interest in reading or learning more about Disney - at least until it's time to plan your next vacation.

Hard as it may be for some of us to believe, most people are event-driven. I know many people who live nearby and who take their kids to Disney every year. When that time approaches, they can't get enough Disney. As their trip draws near, they visit AllEars umpteen times to research menus, DisBoards hundreds of times to ask questions and read what others have experienced, and MouseSavers at least a few times in case a last-minute discount becomes available. But when their trip is over, they lose interest in Disney.

All of their visits to Disney sites are event-driven and have a practical purpose. Event-driven people - at least the ones I know - rarely visit blogs. What bloggers write holds little interest for them. They want menus. They want park hours. They want deals.

That's rather dismal, isn't it? But take heart! True, the number of event-driven people is huge - encompassing everyone who has ever been to Disney and done research about it - but quite a few folks are left over who do have an interest in the parks, their history, their culture. Thousands, certainly. Tens of thousands, likely. Those are our people.

Interest-Driven Disney Fan Sites

Our people are interest-driven. They visit Disney fan sites, often. Daily! It doesn't matter that they have no Disney vacation planned. They simply can't get enough Disney. We write for them. We share them, sometimes, with event-driven sites like MouseSavers, but for the most part, MouseSavers can expect their clicks only when they need a discount and we can expect their clicks, period.

I haven't counted the number of interest-driven Disney fan sites. Every day, as I update the Hullabaloo, I stumble upon new sites. Most are clearly done for personal pleasure. A growing handful are done by people who have (unrealistic?) aspirations of turning their Disney avocation into a full-time job, or at least a secondary source of income.

(By contrast, the number of event-driven sites is quite small.)

The pecking order of interest-driven sites is hard to peg. Most have minimal traffic, at least in comparison to popular event-driven sites like MouseSavers and AllEars, and I've become increasingly certain that sites like, for instance, the Disney Dispatch cannot expand beyond a certain traffic threshold without becoming less of a blog, more of a database.

The reason is that, first, the number of year-round Disney fanatics is smaller than we may think, and second, no single interest-driven site has instant click appeal. Yet, anyway.

Having thus set the stage - and pausing to admit I have no particular qualifications other than having spent a long time studying what makes sites successful - let's look at a few 'industry leaders' and then ruminate on the growth potential for our kind of site.

Pure Event-Driven Sites: MouseSavers

Does anyone visit MouseSavers when not planning a vacation? The discounts and other sage advice on the site are invaluable, for sure, but the content rarely changes and there isn't anything to draw interest-driven Disney fans. And yet, in November 2010, the site had nearly 200,000 unique visitors, according to Compete. I'm sure virtually all of those visitors went to MouseSavers to find a Disney discount. What a huge audience! The turn-over must be extreme, but there are always enough new people planning new vacations to keep MouseSavers near the top of the traffic heap among Disney fan sites.

Unique visitors to MouseSavers from November 2009 - November 2010 (Compete)

I haven't done the analysis, but it's likely that MouseSavers traffic varies in rough proportion to Disney crowd levels. Note the steep drop in August and September traffic as parents prepare their kids to return to school, not Disney. An event-driven site would respond to such variables; an interest-driven site would not.

Hybrid Event-Driven Sites: AllEars

I'd bet the farm that the bulk of the traffic on AllEars is to their menus and other well-organized information. But AllEars also has a fantastic collection of blogs, including one of my favorites, 'The World According to Jack', by Jack Spence. AllEars is smart to give hard-core Disney fans something to do on their site when not planning another vacation. But check this out: in November 2010, AllEars had about 170,000 unique visitors, less than MouseSavers, and the site's traffic has fallen consistently from November 2009, when it had over 300,000 unique visitors. And yet AllEars has those wonderful blogs! Why is its traffic so much less than MouseSavers' traffic when the latter site functions mostly as a bulletin for new Disney discounts?

Unique visitors to AllEars from November 2009 - November 2010 (Compete)

Event trumps interest.

And saving a buck trumps reading a menu trumps learning about the parks.

Growth Potential of Disney Fan Sites

Simple enough. The growth potential of event-driven sites is limited only by the number of people who visit Disney. The growth potential of interest-driven sites, like ours, is limited only by the number of people who adore Disney.

('Adore' may not be the best word but it conveys what I want: when you adore something, you can't keep your eyes off of it.)

Ratio of people who visit Disney to those who adore Disney: probably 1000 to 1.

To evolve an interest-driven Disney site into an event-driven Disney site is to add information to it, cold facts, the kind of facts someone needs to plan a Disney vacation. Most of us run Disney fan sites because we like writing about Disney not because we like compiling information about Disney.

Exceptions exist.

The Disney Food Blog is impeccably well-written, dominates it niche, and has lately begun adding menus and other 'hard' dining facts to a section of the site you may not even know is there. I'm sure the Disney Food Blog wants to become the de facto source of Disney dining information. But just try re-programming people to visit the Disney Food Blog for a menu instead of AllEars.

Despite its top-notch articles, despite its growing collection of menus and other restaurant information, the Disney Food Blog pulled in 'only' 17,000 unique visitors (paltry by event-driven standards, stellar by interest-driven standards) in November 2010, again according to Compete. I like their chances to grow that audience over time but it won't be easy.

Unique visitors to Disney Food Blog from November 2009 - November 2010 (Compete)

I think, also, that the big event-driven Disney sites have peaked. Is it possible to nudge traffic much past 300,000 unique visitors per month? Doubtful. As Disney opens new parks, such as the one planned for Shanghai, new sources of traffic might emerge, but no Disney site will ever get bigger than the total number of Disney park visitors, less the sizeable number who still don't bother gathering information for their trip from on-line sites.

Bob Offers Advice (Run!)

How, then, to 'grow' Disney Dispatch (or sites like it)? I have ideas. You'll see me attempt them here. But I'm realistic. I'll take a solid hundred daily new visitors every month over a transient thousand. Build it by the hundred, that's what we say around here. (Well, actually, we don't say it, and since I'm the only one around here, there isn't a 'we', either.)

The best advice - and the advice I always try to follow - is to please myself. Not only do I know it's good advice, but I have it on authority from no one less than Dr. Seuss, who once wrote: "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

I look forward to diving into the digital Disney-verse every morning because the majority of bloggers are writing about what they like and they enjoy doing it. That approach earned them a new unique visitor - me! - the moment I found their site. I make it a point to mention their sites (and many others) in my daily Hullabaloo since every little bit helps.

Here's your chance to prove my theory!

Leave a comment with the URL of your favorite interest-driven Disney fan-site. Do it anonymously, if you want, and you don't have to write anything else, either - just the URL will do. I bet you know some good ones!

And that's how we'll grow our modest little sites: by sharing the magic!

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